


something more credible than words

by marblecut (sunbound)



Category: One Piece
Genre: ???tbh idk how to tag this it's not that elaborate, Canon Universe, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27402145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbound/pseuds/marblecut
Summary: “No,” he answers flatly.“Why not?”There’s a number of reasons, but Law can’t focus on any other one aside from the obvious: “I won’t take your heart, Mugiwara-ya.”
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Comments: 5
Kudos: 170





	something more credible than words

**Author's Note:**

> idk i went back to one piece after eight years of avoiding it after ace's death and then i watched over 300 episodes within two weeks So Here I Am now. lawlu brain rot.
> 
> i know this trope (is it even a Trope?) has been done before (and as a matter of fact i Was inspired by said fics), but i wanted to try my hand at it since it's been living in my head rent free for a few days now. so have this short lil thing my brain made at five in the morning powered by nothing but gayassery and the will to cause problems

“i am burdened by love because it compels me

to go on living, coerces me into a survival i do not want.”

_([ j28 ](https://floresetcorvi.co.vu/post/633819155089473536) ) _

As a child, as a member of Doflamingo’s crew, Law had seen many exchanges happen, had seen men leave valuable things in Doflamingo’s hand as insurance. _I’ll honour my end of the deal._ It was collateral. Law knows how it works, has known it for thirteen years, has made use of it as a captain himself.

Now, twenty-six and with the Straw Hats’ captain sitting across from him, he second-guesses the method. “No,” he answers flatly.

“Why not?”

There’s a number of reasons, but Law can’t focus on any other one aside from the obvious: “I won’t take your heart, Mugiwara-ya.”

“But this way I won’t have to worry,” and Law bites down on his tongue. Where they’re at, Bartolomeo’s ship swaying gently with the waves, Dressrosa leagues away from them, Law is past doubting Luffy’s trust in him. _Torao is a good man,_ he’s said it in Punk Hazard. Luffy has trusted Law and his plans and ideas one too many times for Law to second-guess it. “I know what you were doing in Dressrosa.”

“The whole point of a plan is knowing what we’ll be doing.”

“No,” Luffy dismisses it, either oblivious to Law’s irony or deliberately ignoring it. “You almost died. _Twice._ You landed an attack that would shorten your life,” Law didn’t think Luffy would’ve paid attention to whatever he said to Doflamingo. He was clearly wrong. “I know what you were doing and I don’t like it.”

“I did what I had to do,” because there was a plan that was shattered far too many times, thought and rethought, broken and mended and broken again. There was a plan and it didn’t include Law sailing out from Dressrosa, but here he is, and he finds himself recalculating his plans all over again. Law can’t feel it, but he knows Bepo’s Vivre Card is trying to get back to its owner, dragging Law along.

“So am I.”

“You don’t have to—” he gives up on finishing that sentence and closes his eyes, exasperation coursing through him as if carried by his blood vessels. Luffy won’t listen, anyway. It’s collateral, he reasons, a heart for a heart, insurance for a promise Law doesn’t want to make. _I’ll keep yours and you’ll keep mine, and we’ll make sure the ends are met._

Luffy smiles at him, then, smiles at him _like that,_ wide and silly, but kind somehow, and it’s a smile Law hasn’t seen for years until Luffy, a smile that’s buried in snow, a deadman's smile. He looks away, but suddenly, Sengoku’s words come up, quick and sure like an ocean’s fury, and weakening Law like seawater ought to.

_Don’t try to find a reason for somebody's love._

Cora-san was stupid and clumsy and kind, always kind, kindness that can only be mustered by hands capable of violence. Kindness like a whirlwind, wreaking havoc everywhere outside it’s centre, and Law thinks of hospital walls, the antiseptic smell of it all; thinks of _Call the World Government_ and _A White City’s survivor,_ both screamed in horror; thinks of Cora-san’s anger and the bruises that would bloom on his knuckles after those doctors met his fury; thinks of the smell of smoke they would always leave behind.

 _Don’t try to find a reason for somebody’s love,_ and Law had done one hell of a good job at convincing himself Cora-san saved him for a _reason,_ for his name, for what that one single letter ought to represent: god-slayer or whatever, and Doflamingo had heavenly blood in his veins, or so they said. Cora-san saved him for a purpose, saved him so Law could finish what he couldn’t. Cora-san saved him for—

_Don’t try to find a reason for somebody's love._

_Don’t try to find a reason,_ but— but there _has_ to be one. There has to be a reason, a purpose, a _goal_ Law can achieve so he won’t be indebted forever, so his grief can go somewhere else, so his grief can _go._ Cora-san has to have saved him for anything other than love because Law can’t repay him otherwise, because the stories always say hatred and love are opposites, and Law has too much of the former to ever make a room for the latter. It’s been thirteen years and he’s learnt how to still his anger, how to cater his hatred, how to nurture purpose out of it, but deep down, there’s still the angry kid wearing grenades on his body like fine jewellery, hissing, _I want to destroy everything:_ a hundred beating hearts in a box for a title, a hundred beating hearts in a box for destruction.

“Why?” he asks. “Why do you want to do this?”

Luffy shrugs. “You’re my friend,” said like it’s easy.

 _I’m not,_ Law thinks. _I shouldn’t be,_ because friendship entails something else and the whole point of an alliance is mutual benefit, a joining of forces for a common goal, because then they both get something out of it and Law won’t be indebted _again,_ not in a currency he could never pay back, but Luffy smiles.

A life for a life. He saved Luffy two years ago. Luffy saved him two nights ago. A gift or a curse, but life was given, was kept. A heart for a heart, and Law grinds his teeth together. “Do you know what this means?” 

_Do you understand what you’re asking for, if you live with the heart of someone who’s been borrowing time for thirteen years?_

“That I get to protect you,” Luffy answers in a heartbeat, his voice steady, no trace of hesitation.

“I don’t need your protection, Mugiwara-ya.”

“You’re strong,” Luffy agrees. “Like Zoro is strong, and Sanji, and everyone in my crew. I protect them anyway.”

“You’re not my captain. You don’t need to protect me.”

“But you’re my friend,” he insists, and Law wishes he would stop using that word, shoving all of its implications onto Law’s lap, a yapping puppy he has no idea how to respond to. “I protect my friends. If this,” Luffy stretches out his hand, pokes at Law’s chest, above his heart, “is what I need to do to protect you, then I’ll do it.”

“I don’t want you to do it.”

Luffy _snickers,_ of all things, and Law resists an urge to bury his face in his hands. “Luffy will just do what he wants to,” every member of the Straw Hats have been warning him since Punk Hazard; different words, but all synonyms. “You can’t stop him any more than you can stop a hurricane,” Nami once told him.

 _He’s inevitable,_ she meant.

“I will want it back,” Law gives in.

Luffy giggles, scoots closer until he’s impossibly close, sitting cross-legged between Law’s own legs. It’s hardly comfortable. “Okay. You can have it back when I’m King of Pirates,” he smiles. Law isn’t stupid enough to think that’s an empty promise, an unmeetable deadline.

He makes a room, the familiar pressure of it under his palm going unnoticed as it expands until it bears both of them. Law touches his own chest first, suppresses a grunt as he pulls his heart out of its place. Luffy’s eyes are calm, serious. _He’s inevitable._ Law touches him next, fingerprints pressed against skin, and he’s warm, _so warm._ Luffy doesn’t make any sound as his heart leaves his body.

Law holds both hearts, one in each hand. They weigh about the same.

“Is this mine?” Luffy asks, pointing at Law’s right hand.

“Yes.”

“Can I hold it?” but he’s pointing at Law’s left hand now.

He sighs. “Yes." 

He feels it as Luffy’s fingers curl around it, gently, so gently Law feels lost. He’s never seen the other captain this careful, conscious of his own strength and its possible consequences. Luffy holds Law’s heart as if it were a fragile thing (and from a medical standpoint, Law knows it is, has felt how fragile his heart is countless times. Self-inflicted pain, most of them; taking out his own heart to poke at it, to see how much pain he can bear).

(His pain tolerance has never been that high.)

Then, Luffy hands the heart back and his attention shifts to the square hole in Law’s chest, a gaping wound. There’s no blood, no sign of harm. Luffy reaches out, sprawls his fingers over it, a hypnotised kind of focus, hypnotic too, and Law holds his breath. “You’ll have to protect it,” he says.

“I thought that was your whole plan, Mugiwara-ya,” but Luffy doesn’t do plans, he knows that now, only impulsive ideas he’s decided are worth a try. He giggles again. Law wants to ask him once more if he’s sure of it, wants to give him time to second-guess it, wants to harbour a hope that Luffy will give up. The thought dissolves as soon as it surges. Luffy would never give up on anything, selfish and stubborn as he is. “Alright,” Law says more to himself than to his audience of one.

He holds Luffy’s heart, turns it around until it’s in the right position and then pushes it into his chest. His breath catches in his throat, the heart’s rhythm mismatching Law’s blood pulse for the briefest of seconds until it steadies, asynchronous until it isn’t.

Luffy giggles. “This is funny,” he says. “I can feel your blood, kinda.”

Law ignores it, positions his heart near Luffy’s chest. “Ready?”

“Ready,” and he pushes it into place, forgets his palm against the other captain’s skin for a few seconds, feeling as his own heart settles in a foreign chest—slowly, but surely. “I can feel you,” Luffy says. “I can feel your heart.”

Law knows it. He can feel him too, steady heartbeats, relaxed. “I can take it back if you want.”

“I wasn’t complaining,” he shrugs as he stands up, grinning impossibly, like what happened is nothing worth batting an eye to. “I’ll protect it. I promise.”

“You don’t have to. To promise, I mean,” Law adds quickly. “I know you will.”

“I know you will too. You’re good at taking care of me,” and before Law can question what _that’s_ supposed to mean, Luffy is already rocketing out of his reach, his arms pulling him to somewhere in Bartolomeo’s ship, to wherever his hands found landing. He hears Luffy laughing into the night wind, someplace Law’s eyes can’t reach him.

**Author's Note:**

> hope this was a neat read.
> 
> if anyone's interested, i'm (kinda) on [twitter](https://twitter.com/junitonin) (i mostly talk about kpop tho) and on [tumblr](https://floresetcorvi.co.vu/). thank you so much for reading <3


End file.
